No Woman, No Revolution, Part 4
Women’s
Charter
On 17 April 1954, fourteen
months before the Freedom Charter was adopted in
Kliptown on 26 June 1955, the Federation of South African Women adopted the
Women’s Charter (attached, and linked below).
Following on from what we
have read in the last three weeks (from Zetkin, Kollontai,
Luxemburg, Lenin, and the Comintern), we can see the same thread
re-emerging several decades later here in South Africa, as for example in this
short passage from the Women’s Charter:
“We women do not form a society separate from the men.
There is only one society, and it is made up of both women and men. As women we
share the problems and anxieties of our men, and join hands with them to remove
social evils and obstacles to progress.”
The Women’s Charter was not
directed against men; nor did it hold out women as a separate class of people
as compared to the men. It opposed such a separation.
Thus it placed the question
of women in the mainstream, and then it went on to say:
“It is our intention to carry out a nation-wide
programme of education that will bring home to the men and women of all
national groups the realisation that freedom cannot be won for any one section
or for the people as a whole as long as we women are kept in bondage.”
It is very sad to read the
following, from the women of 55 years ago, knowing that it is still as true
today as it was then:
“We know what it is to keep family life going in
pondokkies and shanties, or in overcrowded one-room apartments. We know the
bitterness of children taken to lawless ways, of daughters becoming unmarried
mothers whilst still at school, of boys and girls growing up without education,
training or jobs at a living wage.”
On the question of forms of
organisation of women, a matter to which the CU will return in the next item of
this part, the Women’s Charter as such has little to say, except for the
following items from the list of demands:
·
For the
removal of all laws that restrict free movement, that prevent or hinder the
right of free association and activity in democratic organisations, and the
right to participate in the work of these organisations.
·
To build and
strengthen women's sections in the National Liberatory movements, the
organisation of women in trade unions, and through the peoples' varied
organisation.
·
To co-operate
with all other organisations that have similar aims in South
Africa as well as throughout the world.
The 1954 Women’s Charter was non-committal on
the question of women’s organisation. This was perhaps a sign that the matter
was already controversial within the liberation movement. The ANC Women’s
League had been founded in 1948; we will see in later sessions that the ANC WL
had its way in the 1950s and again in the 1990s and in the 2000s, obstructing
the growth of a general women’s democratic mass movement.
The Women’s Charter of 1954 stands as a
monument to South African women’s determination to organise independently as
women, but this is an aspiration that has yet to be realised.
[The image above is of a 1987 FEDSAW Western
Cape poster]
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Women’s Charter,
FEDSAW Founding Conference, 1954.
